Bus Plotter II: Linear Extrapolation

 September 24th, 2010
mbta, mbtaplot, programming, python, tech, transport
I've modified the bus plotter so that it will estimate bus locations based on simple linear extrapolation from it's last two reported locations. One downside is this often makes buses go off the route, so I think I'm going to make buses "snap" to their routes when within some distance. Even smarter would be to either do my own predictions or figure out some way to use the nextbus predictions. Unfortunately, it appears nextbus's webservice only has a command to request predictions by stop, not by bus. Bother.

This is what it looks like on the 77 route (which is an unfairly flattering example because the route is pretty straight).

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